Facebook Rumoured to be Planning a Music Streaming Service to Take On Spotify and Apple Music

Facebook is planning to go head-to-head with the likes of Apple Music and Spotify with the launch of its own music streaming service.

Musically reports that the company is initially working on building ad-supported music video tools, so that bands and record companies can embed videos natively into Facebook pages, and make money off of them.

It will also be licensing a third party content-ID system, similar to the one found on YouTube, so that the right people get paid, regardless of who uploads the video. Apparently Facebook royalties will match those of YouTube to start with but could increase if Facebook can better target adverts because it knows so much about us.

Apparently the plan is that once this is sorted to then launch a fully fledged music streaming service, similar to Apple Music or Spotify, which would be a huge power-play and could be potentially lucrative for Facebook if it can hoover up subscription revenues.

Musically speculates that rather than build its own service from scratch, it is likely that Facebook would buy one of the smaller streaming players such as Rdio, given the company is not a stranger to splashing the cash (see WhatsApp, Instagram and Oculus Rift).

A purchase of Rdio would give Facebook instant access to not just Rdio's technology, but also its pre-existing deals with record companies, which could save it the sort of negotiation and wrangling we've recently seen Apple go through. But then again, Facebook is so massive anyway that it could likely decide to go it alone.

The broader implications of such a move are interesting to think about too: if Facebook launched its own streaming app, would this kill Apple's enthusiasm for OS-level Facebook integration on iOS? What about Spotify's Facebook sign-in and social integration? And does this mean that our guilty melodic pleasures will be posted all over our newsfeeds? [Musically]